OAKLAND — There is light at the end of the tunnel for Cal/OSH Appeals Board and its long-standing backlog of appeals cases, said Candice Traeger, new board chairperson. The good news: it is a train. “I’m fond of saying to the people at the board that there’s a train coming. You have two choices: Get …
OAKLAND — There is plenty of interest in Cal/OSHA’s proposed permanent heat illness standard, as evidenced by the packed room at the Harris State Building Nov. 10 for the latest advisory committee meeting on the landmark standard. But there appears to be little agreement on what the standard should look like, with employer representatives showing …
California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health (DOSH) reports that a day laborer working in San Diego’s construction industry died Nov. 1 of hyperthermia. The worker, whose identity had not been released at press time, was employed by Johnson WA Construction on a roofing project at a residence in San Diego. The mother of the …
California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health is investigating an incident in the Sacramento Valley town of Willows in which a foreman for an agricultural concern was seriously injured during a pumpkin operation Oct. 30. Vidal Martinez, 46, was reportedly moving pumpkins by auger from a field to a storage vessel when his foot became …
In a ruling handed down earlier this week, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with San Francisco’s Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on the issue of whether employers must pay for the time workers take to put on and take off personal protective equipment. The ruling settles conflicting opinions, with the First Circuit court, based in …
The University of Michigan Center for Occupational Health and Safety Engineering announces its annual occupational ergonomics short courses in Los Angeles. The series includes two courses, back to back, beginning Feb. 20 at the Four Points Hotel at Los Angeles International Airport. First is “Occupational Ergonomics: Work Evaluation and Prevention of Upper Limb and Back …
California’s Occupational Health Branch (OHB) of the California Dept. of Health Services recently looked at three California on-the-job incidents, two of them fatal, which illustrate some of the grim statistics the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has compiled over the past decade or so. They also illustrate the ease with which simple inexperience or …
Cal/OSH Appeals Board correctly decided that the state’s lockout/tagout safety standard also requires employers to block out moving parts to protect workers, a California appellate court has ruled. In doing so, the Court of Appeal, Third Appellate District, affirmed the principle that courts defer to an administrative agency’s interpretation, unless it flies in the face …